green. green. green. green. video for your media project free media are to. everything i have no neighbors or. as we call. it with. mining for trouble congress went to recess until after the election but not before muscled a cold regulation bill through the house we'll tell you about the new war on coal in just a moment. it just bothers me when people just walk by and you know don't even know which i had to help. and this man might look homeless but he is far from it i'll tell you why he chooses to sleep on the streets one week every year and what he wants you to know.

as thursday october fourth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. what has been called one of the least productive congress is in american history the one hundred twelfth congress has disapproval ratings hovering around ten percent and while the american people remain frustrated over the so-called do nothing congress interestingly enough congress didn't do something before taking a break until the election the house managed to pass the stop the war on coal act with the overwhelming support of republicans the legislation which does away with many environmental regulations passed the house correspondent christine freeze out has more. it was one of the final votes taken by members of the one hundred twelfth congress before they returned to their districts to convince voters why they should be reelected h r thirty four zero nine as legislation that both the democratic led senate and president obama said would be dead on arrival but which two hundred

thirty three members of the house and also republicans say will save jobs and stop what they call the war on coal. there are major coal mines in more than a dozen states in this country. and in some states like west virginia coal is king. if you want to live here you either team or ted trees or you mancow everything i have a moment neighbors say it is because. everything bob told mind cole most of his life and says his son now does the same it's people like them the republican congressman say they're fighting for with a bill they've named the stop the war on coal act of two thousand and twelve those who believe that there is no war on coal or in dangerous denial the actions of this administration against coal have caused massive uncertainty in the market place

inside the bill massive restrictions on environmental regulations were supporters say cost the coal industry millions and prevent it from expanding this bill takes a number of simple commonsense and long overdue step to rein in the obama administration out of control e.p.a. which is waging all out war on american energy and coal is at the heart of that war opponents call it the polluters bill of rights and say it makes the air less safe to breathe blocks efforts to safely dispose of coal ash and severely weakens the clean water. some lawmakers say it's hypocritical to talk about the immorality of passing along debt to future generations and then to support this bills like this one are piling another form of debt on our children we're leaving them to deal with the consequences of letting coal companies pollute the air that our children brief

and the water that they drink but. the issue is already one that's become part of the national presidential campaign. i'm all over in the coal industry this ad put out by the romney campaign is running in west virginia and ohio where romney recently spoke his vice president said coal is more dangerous than terrorists can you imagine that this. this tells you precisely what what he actually feels and what he's done it's good to be back in iowa for president obama's part he wants to continue on the path he laid out four years ago putting more focus on clean coal and clean energy overall let's produce more oil and gas but let's also produce more biofuels let's produce more fuel efficient cars . let's produce more solar and wind power and other sources of clean renewable energy energy of course a hot topic in every election and like so many bills drawn up and voted on in

congress to stop the war on coal legislation never really sort of a chance at becoming law over all this highlights a much larger question how much do lawmakers actually accomplish while i am holding in my hand this is a list of a few more than thirty post offices that were renamed in the last couple years but at a cost of four point eight million dollars a day just to fund the u.s. house of representatives we thought it was an issue that warranted a closer look in washington christine for our team. over more on this so-called war on call david baron managing editor for earth justice joins us now welcome to the show so this phrase that is being used now the war on call it sounds like a loaded loaded phrase is it just that or is there an actual battle going on and if so who is pitted against who here well i'm afraid what we're seeing is some members of congress pitted against the health of the american people this bill that they

just passed which was one of dozens of bills that the house has passed since last year too. demolish environmental protections would weaken safeguards against air pollution at the cost of potentially thousands of lives it would block federal protections against dangerous water pollution from coal mining operations it would prevent the federal government from requiring states to meet clean water standards it would block limits on dangerous carbon pollution and on and on and on we can protect public health and have jobs in this country but this kind of destructive legislation accomplishes nothing other than make it harder for parents to protect the health of their kids for seniors to stay out of the hospital and for all of us to lead the kind of healthful lives we're entitled to in this great nation you know we just saw and christine that report they're venturing out

to that town where there are people whose entire lives revolve around the coal industry it's their it their whole life we had so it needs talent i mean what do you say to those people do these environmental regulations and danger their livelihood. you know it's not the case the the environment environmental regulations are a very tiny part of the cost of doing business in this country to the extent that the coal industry is endangered it's because that industry can't compete with other cleaner more efficient forms of energy that's the problem they're facing and instead of modernizing and coming up to the to the reality of the situation these companies are running to congress trying to prevent trying to block the kinds of the clean air and clean water protections that have been adopted by bipartisan

consensus over the past forty years that's just plain irresponsible looks like of the their lobbying has been paying off because we stopped the war on coal they'll dead and deed passed the house and this issue was brought up during last night's presidential debate let's take a listen to what republican nominee mitt romney said. i like coal i'm going to make sure we continue to burn clean coal people in the coal industry feel like it's getting crushed by your policies i want to get america and north america energy independent so we can create those jobs and that's a phrase that he kept saying time and time again clean coal when you say that it's kind of sounds like an oxymoron is there such a thing as clean coal well tell that to the moms who have to worry about their kids having mercury in their bloodstream which comes from burning coal tell that to the folks in appalachian whose streams and communities have been damaged and

destroyed because of mountaintop removal coal mining tell that to the folks living in the communities where a toxic coal ash waste threatens water supplies the simple fact is there is no such thing as clean coal maybe cleaner but the fact is if we really want to achieve energy independence we need to come up with renewable sources of energy more energy efficiency and ways of being a more friendly to our planet and to ourselves that ensures we have a secure energy future and a clean environment ok a president obama last night during the debate did bring up alternative energy let's take a listen to what he had to say. on energy governor romney and i we both agree that we've got to boost american energy production and oil and natural gas production are higher than they've been in years but i also believe that we've got to look at

the energy source of the future like wind and solar and biofuels and make those investments. and of course right now and our g. dependence that's being talked about also the issue of jobs are being talked about that's some people say that's the number one issue. and it is this. if we do put these regulations on coal could it could that lead to job losses. well you know whenever there is a shift in energy use you're going to see a shift in where people are employed right now we're seeing a shift to natural gas because we're finding more plentiful supplies that still need to be developed in an environmentally responsible way and we have a long way to go on that but to suggest that we have to have air pollution and water pollution and threats to our kids in our seniors and in order to have jobs is

a bankrupt philosophy that the american people have long rejected and rightly so since the clean air act was adopted we've seen jobs increase we've seen the economy grow and that's the kind of job growth we need ok and president obama he did valid to make this transition to alternative energy wind solar and biofuels all these other things but is it realistic to say that we can transition affordably to these alternative energy sources sure it's realistic you know one hundred fifty years ago people would have thought that coal was the only fuel around and we now know that there are a lot of other alternatives if we put our minds to it we can achieve great things in this country but if we keep ourselves mired in the energy choices of the past that's where we'll stay and i don't think that's what people want in this country ok lastly i do want to ask you it doesn't look like this bill will pass the senate or president obama is vowing to veto it so in the event that it does pass or

legislation like this does it pass what would the long term effects be on on communities on the people where these clients are located well i'm afraid what we'll see is more illness more folks being put in the hospital shorter lifespans and a lower quality of life not just in these communities but in downwind places that have to deal with that kind of pollution we can do better in this country all right david thank you so much for coming on the show and discussing this very important and timely issue that was david barrett managing attorney for earth justice thank you. laurie now it is that time of the day where we check in with our web team and see what they're working on our team by producer andrew blake is in the newsroom to tell us more hi there andrew it's not too much here but i do know that you are working or you worked on

a story about something called fusion centers yeah what is that all about and why have governor romney supported them so strongly ok well clearly you don't read it if you're asking the questions but i'll go easy on you ok so it's actually here in our to america i'm sure you know if we do a lot of stuff about surveillance and data retention on a federal and private level and a lot of the stuff all gets fed to these things called fusion centers now there's almost eighty of them across the united states and they're all set up after september eleventh to kind of finally facilities were able to process all this information coming in whether it's computer history or cell phone records or whatever so part of homeland security they have a pretty big investment here in fact spent at least one point four billion dollars in the last decade through these fusion centers so you know you might be asking well they're collecting all this data is that any useful well bob bipartisan committee on the senate was wondering the same thing they've been studying it for around two years and they actually just put out their final analysis earlier this

week and it this committee says that these fusion centers with seventy seven of them across the u.s. . it's a hundred forty page document or at least it is pretty much not a single nice thing in the top of your report the senate pretty much tears apart these fusion centers and say that here you go establishing something for the sake of counterterrorism and instead all you've done this collect useless. actually constitutionally violating. protections of americans through this crazy surveillance of people i'm sorry they didn't come off to eloquently but i think you picked up on it i got it they say you're basically saying that billions and billions of dollars was spent on a program that was not a fact and. possibly unconstitutional oh yeah it was definitely tons and tons of civil liberties violations they were spying on people who were at protecting or spying of people who were protesting exercising the first amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and sort of actually having a reasonable suspicion think people that people were committing crimes staffers at

these huge and centers were actually conducting record searches and doing surveillance of just regular americans and they were singling them out and writing of files on them just to be processed for the sake of counterterrorism and once you go back and audit all these things the people even working for the d.h.s.s. you saw these went no no this is kind of a lot of crap is actually a direct quote one of the reviewers of a d h s report actually said during one of the interviews that this is just a bunch of crap so we don't have a final price on everything we know at least a couple hundred million dollars d.h.s.s. possibly spent upwards of one point four billion so far not to mention that a bunch of private local law enforcement agencies are also investing in these fusion centers but like i said we have one hundred forty page report out of the senate that says this is nothing but garbage you have broken the law you've spied on civilians you haven't even caught terrorists and everything under the name of counterterrorism has just been pretty much wasted and it's cost at least one point

four billion dollars so far and so we're actually still going to the poor and i did see a story yesterday about how one of the massachusetts fusion centers was endorsed by governor romney back in the day and there's lots of interesting stuff that's coming out of these reports so far but one nice thing i must say at least in my perspective is that this. partisan senate committee that went over the fusion centers they really couldn't find a single nice thing to say about the report is actually incredibly well written and very very scathing so if you have some cave and that's what it sounds like yeah yes if you're not too crazy about the d.h.s.s. you don't want the government spying on you you should go take a look at what they put together because it's actually really eye opening and hopefully we'll get some changes done because of it right. we can read all about it on the web site our teams out com slash usa and there it is for that update my pleasure that was our t. web producer andrew blake with a preview of what is trending today on our web site. also ahead on our t.v. he's not homeless for one week every year this new yorkers sleeps on the streets to

raise awareness about poverty levels in the u.s. track and violent pursuits when we come back. here's mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i mean the guy who cares an awful lot about you sir are

you know what kind of mind their terror cells in your neighborhood all want us to defeat terrorism be on the liberal and the christian. consecutively to go to the. you know super to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that's all the same facials the garbage he calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break this but. poverty barely got a mention in last night's presidential debate many families in america can't afford to forget about it recently released data shows that poverty rates are hitting record levels some people however remain that ikeda to highlighting and humanizing

the issue of poverty are two profiles a man who goes homeless in new york city for one week every year to bring attention to their plight starts a correspondent on a saucy charkha caught up with him. new york city. but it is. a blissful carefree time but among the picture perfect settings lives misery and sorrow out in the open basically you know voice less visible so a lot of people it's builds and lonely a plague of homelessness has been taking over meijer us cities in the last several years when you see someone really old or someone really young you just think to yourself what can i do even if it's a dollar just to help them out and so awful according to the coalition for the homeless forty three thousand people are in new york city shelters ten thousand families and seventeen thousand children it just bothers me when people just walk

by and you know don't even know reach out a hand to help across the country over half a million people are homeless these are human beings that we're talking about here you know these are people you know these up families. these are children use of from lee's has been trying to raise awareness about this epidemic problem for the last four years every year he leaves his daytime job and goes homeless for a week and attempts to draw attention to what he calls a catastrophe when you see. you know living on the streets begging for money to students you know living. their cars because they can't afford. college housing i mean yeah i mean this is huge last year you said why. barefoot and live at grand central station and. this year he's homeless in a park and has taken about silence for our cameras caught up with him right before his transformation but i really say it's so complex someone that you know has to go

through this every single day i see you i see you you know and you know i hear i hear you a silent cries i hear you cry and that's one of the reasons why i'm doing this project is because of you then again during his project when he did not speak. out on the streets yousif was also fasting during the holy month of ramadan a huge percentage of people a life lived paycheck to paycheck you know what what happens when you. lose a job and you're living paycheck to paycheck. use of says every year the faces of the homeless change i think if people really know that. you know the homeless person that you could be you that this could happen absolutely anyone then people would really you know start taking it a little more serious some of the most unexpected new yorkers are living proof homes before. for about six months i was homeless growing up i mean i know how

hard it is people think that people here do just drug drug addicts or you know someone who just can't get a job and for many average americans just getting by is a daily struggle considering that i'm on the verge of homelessness right now and think about it all the time i probably wouldn't because i'm concerned about that every damn i like for most users project is an excessive challenge they'd rather not take my children with i don't do it myself i don't care about it really. you know it's an argument. but. you know we're all a little bit selfish instead of waiting for politicians to. change you try to take matters into their own hands. as as a as a city as a seat at the front if. for now we're back on our weakest. zero zero most vulnerable there's a lot more the politicians could do and there's

a lot more that they should until then it's people like you taking one step at a time a new build. a future going to parties. to talk more about eustace experience and poverty and america i was joined by r t correspondent ana safiya churkin us well as this is something that this young man does every year like we mention in this report it's really you know sad to witness year in and year out we meet up with him to see how he is continuing his fight against poverty and homelessness in the united states and seeing someone like that going through these sacrifices and literally turning teary eyed when talking about the issue of homelessness when talking about all the poverty in the united states yet politicians really brushing these issues largely aside this is something that you know the changes that you have told us about have been just really frightening he tells us that every year the situation is getting worse and the faces of the people that are homeless and poor on the streets of new york city keeps changing and we

brought up people in that report common americans on the street who say look we were dealing with this we're on the brink of homelessness i was homeless once in my youth so this is such a widespread issue and with this particular story this this man does this every year and with from our experience every time we meet he just gets really sadder and satir because he sees how little is really getting done to solve these issues. we heard poverty it was only briefly touched upon in last night's presidential debate here's what mitt romney had to say about it last night. a trickle down government approach which has government thinking you can do a better job than free people pursuing their dreams and it's not working and the proof of that is twenty three million people out of work the proof of that is one of the six people in poverty the proof of that is we've gone from thirty two million. to forty seven million of food stamps the proof of that is that sixty

percent of college graduates this year can't find work ok so we heard from mitt romney himself so apparently he does know that this problem does exist and he named those very dismissive. but yet most of the time first of all it was only very briefly touched upon and then it most of the time they were talking about the middle class not to say that the middle class it isn't important in a lot needs to be done to help the middle class but obviously poverty is a huge huge problem in america. so why is it not discussed more good question liz you know as you rightly say the numbers were mentioned the situation was mentioned in passing we saw romney bring this up of course obama was not talking about this because obviously this does not put him in a good position bringing up these ridiculous numbers that the united states is still dealing with but absolutely that the problem of these debates is not that they were just really a snooze fest according to many just vague words on two candidates you know pretty

much saying the face of the things we've we've known all along but really not focusing on issues that are just so burning for so many americans romney brings up the number of the twenty three million people that are unemployed you know but they're not talking about the fact that one in six children are living in poverty and the district of columbia the number of poverty among children is thirty percent is anybody talking about this absolutely not because the solutions are just not being presented these candidates don't talk about these issues because apparently they don't know how to solve these problems and this is exactly something that a president should know how to do. and especially during an election campaign coming to an end that's right not too long ago i interviewed dr cornel west and tavis smiley radio talk show host both of them very outspoken on this issue of poverty they are now on this poverty tor want to take a listen now to a let's have this smiley had to say about the issue the data keeps coming at us day

in and day out that poverty is the new america norm is threatening our democracy it's a matter of national security so by any industry one has to understand that poverty is a major problem that we've got to get addressed in this country. as kind of putting it in perspective calling the issue of poverty so pervasive that it's a matter of national security and we have this raw data. set it may be romney's that it but i doesn't have the power to affect policy and change per specked of which is also ultimately what needs to be done in order to bring about change. liz it definitely should but apparently it's not for some reason you know and all of these critics throughout the last year of for example the occupy wall street movement that we've covered extensively have been saying oh these are non-issues that these hippies are bringing up this is exactly the kind of thing that the occupy wall street movement has talked about this entire time that the poverty the ninety nine percent the majority of the people are being left really neglected and

like you mentioned of course yes they're talking about the middle class yes it's understood by everybody that more jobs need to be created and the middle class that used to be the american dream and represent the american dream is largely suffering but for some reason the really extremely poor people in this country right now are really kind of being marginalized and brushed aside and all of these problems the numbers seem to be known to everybody including mitt romney but exactly what and who should be doing something about this is apparently still a mystery all right well hopefully it does get discussed more and makes its way into. i guess the priorities of our elected leaders i guess we're going have to wait and see but on a selfie i thank you so much for for coming on the show that was our to correspond on a saw theater in a. well that's going to wrap it up for this hour but for more on the stories we covered you can check out our you tube channel that is youtube dot com slash our to america we post all of our stories on line there in full or you can also check out

our web site that address is our t.v. dot com slash u.s. air web team our web producers are busy working on stories that we don't always have time to think get to on the air and to see what i'm doing when i am not reporting the news you can also follow me on twitter liz wahl we will be right back here at eight pm but breaking the set with abby martin is coming up in just a half hour stay tuned.